Remove casserole dish. Add egg and ½ cup milk to mixing bowl. Beat with whisk. Ladle egg/milk mix over casserole. Bake for another 15 minutes or until golden brown. Bobotie goes well with rice. However, it goes really, really well with chutney. Omit the chutney and you’ll risk a visit from the culinary police.

TIDBITS

1) There are no gourmet restaurants in space. There once was that orbiting fast-food restaurant called The Outer Limits. It relied heavily on drive-through traffic. It failed. You probably never heard of it.

2) New owners reopened the eatery. This time they added space ports, hoping to get dock-in business from space-shuttle pilots and passengers to and from the International Space Station.

3) It failed as well. Indeed, it never opened. Costs did in this project. The parts necessary to building an up-to-date space docks surprised the eager entrepreneurs. And my gosh, the transportation costs for the materials. Out of this world! Who knew that NASA charged so much to blast off with even the most modest kitchen appliances?

4) Oh, and here is a tip for would be extraterrestrial restarauteurs. When hiring a private company to carry your culinary supplies to your orbiting eatery, don’t hire the shuttle on a mileage basis. The cost will eat you alive. Overtime wages for the shuttle operator are pretty horrific as well.

5) Anyway, there’s a hamburger joint, up there that is fully equipped and ready for business. Make an offer to the bank holding the mortgage. you’ll find it quite easy to work with.

6) I fear I’ve dwelt too long on the costs of operating an off-Earth restaurant.. There are benefits as well. You really don’t need a refrigerator. Simply place your meat, ice cream, etc. outside. The food won’t go bad; the temperature is nearly absolute zero out there. Your restaurant being the only thing of any size in the neighborhood will generate enough gravitational field to carry the food all with it.

7) I do recommend putting all your food in a giant mesh. Picture this. You’re trying to bring inside a rack of ribs. Instead of hooking the ribs you poke them away. The ribs fall out of orbit and hurtle to Earth. Except the ribs don’t make it to Earth. They crash into a satellite on the way down.

8) Only it’s not just any satellite. It’s the one people use to transmit photos of babies, kittens, and puppies to each other. Deprived of their cute pictures, billions of distraught people get into their cars to get the one thing that can ease their pain, a really good burger. And if billions of people turn on their cars at once, the resulting exhaust will cover the world asphyxiating everyone.

9) Social media companies have a reserve satellite permanently on call on a launching pad for this very occasion. They can get a new satellite functioning in space in fifteen minutes.

10) People will probably realize this. Enough of them to avoid suffocating the world. Probably, but do you want to take that chance? So for the future of all of us, please place your out-of-shuttle food in a secure mesh net. Thank you.

11) In the meantime, those wishing to enjoy a fine meal far from the madding crowd, might want to consider heading north, way north. The culinary scene in Svalbard, Norway is vibrant despite being in the land of four-month-long nights and having only 2,642 people. Indeed, the town of Longyearbyen has thirteen fine restaurants. According to TripAdvisorTM, the highest rated restaurant is Huset. It’s also the northernmost gourmet restaurant.

Chef Paul

My cookbook, Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World, and my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, are available in paperback or Kindle on amazon.com

Was it a sign of the end of the world? Should we stocking up on mini-tacos? All I know for sure is that in my town of Poway, cultural an and capital of San Diego County, the ant population plunged last week. Specifically, they died in my refrigerator, in my freezer.

Why did they do that? Was it a long-postponed attempt to lay a guilt trip on me for that childhood ant farm where they all died? Honestly, I didn’t mean it. Perhaps I filled my farm with soldier ants from differing colonies. I’ll just have to live with the horrible uncertainty for the rest of my life.

Why did they commit suicide where they did? For a full day they streamed into the freezer section to meet their icy deaths. Who among us can really feel an ant’s angst” Were they exo-skeletal weary of the daily, relentless onslaught of spiders, lizards, Rustler’s Round UpTM ant traps, and the terrifying stomping action of the human’s foot? Did they finally say, “Enough, cruel word!” The Ant’s Graveyard

Or was Norway stirring things up again? After all, this country brought us Viking raids and lutefisk, the worst-tasting, smelliest, glueist food the world has even seen. Perhaps Norway’s dysfunctional lemmings infected Poway’s ants with their morose attitudes? Before the days of cable TV, I doubt may Powegian ants ever heard of suicidal lemmings. Now, look what happens.

Mass extinctions of species by suicide. It might be the end of the world. Bummer. Or maybe, I’ve just invented a better ant trap.

– Paul De Lancey, Mighty Hunter

Check out my latest novel, the Christmas thriller, Beneficial Murders. My books are available in paperpack or Kindle on amazon.com,

Peel potatoes. Cut each potato into eight pieces. Put potato pieces into large pot. Add enough water to cover potato bits. Bring water to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes or until potato is tender. Drain potato bits. Add butter to pot with potato pieces. Mash potatoes with potato masher.

While potato bits simmer, add hot dogs to pot with enough water to cover them. Boil on high heat for 5 minutes. Turn off heat.

Also while potato bits are simmering, add eggs and milk to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add flour and baking powder to pot. Mix with whisk. Add egg/milk mixture, salt and sugar to pot. Mix with whisk until smooth.

5) Thus, the Norwegians may eat whatever food they want and still feel safe.

6) Waffles are great comfort food. So are hot dogs.

7) Eating a waffle-wrapped hot dog will make you quite happy. Ecstatic even. Best not to overdo it. All things in moderation.

8) Potatoes, not pancakes as was once believed, enabled the Prussian kingdom survive the Seven Years War, 1756 – 1763. Invading armies destroyed the crops that grew above ground, such as wheat, but couldn’t find the potatoes lurking underground. The Prussian peasants simply waited for the marauders to leave, dug up the potatoes, ate them, and survived.

9) However, you cannot hide waffles or even hot dogs in the ground for any length of time and expect to find them edible. Which is why peasants never planted waffles.

10)) The Seven Years War of tidbit 8) fame really did take seven years.

11) However, the Hundred Years War, which ran from 1337-1453, took 116 years.

12) Similarly, Panama hats do not come from Panama.

13) They come from Ecuador.

14) Ecuador is not that far from Chile.

15) In Chile. It is impolite to eat using your hands.

16) So if you are carrying a potato in your Panama hat, because you never know when a ruffian soldier frisks you for a loaf of rye bread, be sure to eat it with a fork.

17) It might be hard to eat a raw potato with a fork. Eating mashed potatoes would be easier.

18) However, your Chilean friends will think that coming to their houses with mashed potatoes on your head is also impolite. And they will tell you so.

19) However, your Chilean hosts might forebear from social criticism if you are a vampire doctor.

20) It’s all so confusing. It’s why we have etiquette experts.

– Chef Paul

My cookbook, Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World, and novels are available in paperpack or Kindle on amazon.com

Here is how Google completes your search question when you type in the words, “Why is (some country) . . .?” Presumably the first completed choice by Google mirrors peoples’ stereotypes about particular nation.

And now, stereotypes for the first fifty countries that popped into my mind. Okay, many of the following countries were chosen because I love their cuisine. or I enjoyed traveling there. My favorite is, “Why is Greenland so big?”

The culinary scene in Svalbard is vibrant despite being in the land of four-month-long nights and having only 2,642 people. Indeed, the town of Longyearbyen has thirteen fine restaurants. According to TripAdvisor, the highest rated restaurant is Huset. It’s also the northernmost gourmet restaurant. The best Thai food is found at Mary-Ann’s Riggen, while Classic Pizza serves the best pizza. Here is the link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurants-g503713-Svalbard.html